Dr. Daniel Gifford, an alumnus of Mason's History PhD program, has published a new book titled The Last Voyage of the Whaling Bark Progress: New Bedford, Chicago and the Twilight of an Industry (McFarland Books, 2020).
From the publisher's website:
"The whaling bark Progress was a New Bedford ship transformed into a whaling museum for Chicago’s 1893 world’s fair. Traversing waterways across North America, the whaleship enthralled crowds from Montreal to Racine. Her ultimate fate, however, was to be a failed sideshow of marine curiosities and a metaphor for a dying industry out of step with Gilded Age America. This book uses the story of the Progress to detail the rise, fall, and eventual demise of the whaling industry in America. The legacy of this whaling bark can be found throughout New England and Chicago, and invites questions about what it means to transform a dying industry into a museum piece."
Dr. Gifford discusses using microhistory to write his book in a blog post for the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era:
https://www.shgape.org/using-microhistory-to-tell-a-whale-of-a-tale/
February 15, 2021